Today we are going to finish off my real world chat with “John” re the characteristics of good visit design in the B2B sales world (this conversation started two post/weeks ago).  A good place to refer to at this point is the Miller Heiman concept of the VBR…..the valid business reason .  It is useful to extend the VBR thinking, and the notion of the partnership calendar I espoused last week to think in extreme terms about how you would help your relevant visitees in Key Account-land actually do their day to day job, and how can you assist in such a way as to make them look good.  For a little while at least, do not even think about the sales levels of your product and service you aspire to.  You are likely to find that such thinking outputs can be clustered under these functions….

•  Inventory management/category captaincy

• Business partner education/advisory

Then think about your products/services, and include something around………..

• Collaborative volume commitments/win-win loyalty program execution

In order to support sales team optimisation, productivity, RoI and competitive advantage, there is some detail to be developed under these broad headings ….. and as always , the devil is in the detail.  But if you can hammer out a clear, documented set of VBRs sitting underneath each, in such a way as these VBRs can form activity streams that can be calendarised WITH the customer as the basis of the visit program, you will very definitely find yourself well inside the upper quintile of Australian B2B sales organisational development.